Power consumption is becoming an increasingly important design consideration for electronic devices. Estimating power consumption for a circuit design that is to be implemented in a programmable IC (integrated circuit) such as a PLD (programmable logic device) is typically performed using designer-estimated resource counts or information from a completely implemented design. The power estimation also uses clock frequencies and global toggle rate defaults, which may be individually changed by the designer.
One power estimation tool requires a user to enter detailed information in numerous spreadsheets. If accurate information is specified in the numerous spreadsheets, the resulting power estimate will also be accurate. However, a highly inaccurate power estimate may result if a key item is omitted, an incorrect value is entered, or a default value is overlooked and that default value is inconsistent with the intended design. Another tool reduces the amount of data that a user must enter and thereby reduces the chances of inaccurate default values causing an inaccurate power estimate. However, by greatly reducing the number of parameters that the user can specify, the resulting power estimate may be less accurate than desired. Yet another tool requires a complete placed-and-routed circuit design. While an accurate power estimate may be obtained with a complete design, it may be desirable to have an accurate power estimate much earlier in the design process.